Author Topic: Geneticists have deciphered the prehistory of inhabitants of Kamchatka and North America  (Read 1012 times)

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Online Elderberry

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Czech Academy of Sciences 07. 06. 2019

A new and extensive study by 35 researchers from Europe, America and Russia sheds new light into the origin, genetic relations, and migrations of ancient Eskimos, Native Americans of the Na-Dene language family, and inhabitants of Kamchatka. The geneticists have used an arsenal of the newest genetics methods, they have obtained a large amount of genome data from human remains up to 2,000 years old, cooperated with archaeologists and a linguist, and created a new model of ancient settlement of this vast area. This unique study, led by Pavel Flegontov from the University of Ostrava and from the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, has now been published in the Nature journal.

Paleogenetics is a rapidly developing scientific discipline at the junction of archeology and genetics. Due to the rapid progress in the methods of sequencing DNA extracted from ancient bones, as well as in the methods of genetic data analysis, archaeogenetics is becoming an integral component of research in human prehistory. However, the study of relatively recent history (the last 5 thousand years) by methods of archaeogenetics is, oddly enough, methodologically difficult, despite the abundance of bone samples and their usually good preservation. As population density increased and means of transportation developed, mobility of people increased, as well. In the long millennia of the Paleolithic, genetic isolation of small groups of hunters was the dominant pattern, but later, from the beginning of the Neolithic, migration and population mixture became increasingly common.

An example of such a complex region is Chukotka and the American Arctic – the vast expanses of tundra and Arctic desert, inhabited by sparse groups of Chukchi, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Inuit. At first, the tundra zone of Alaska, the Canadian Arctic islands and Greenland was populated by so-called Paleo-Eskimos. This process began about 5,000 years ago with a migration of a small group of caribou, muskox and seal hunters across the Bering Strait. Then a succession of several archaeological cultures culminated in modern Eskimos, Aleuts, and Inuit. However, archeology very rarely can find whether the change in material culture was accompanied by mass migration and population replacement, or if these were primarily cultural processes. Therefore, for decades, there have been controversies about the history of the Arctic peoples, about the relationship of Paleo-Eskimos and Inuit, as well as about the interaction of Paleo-Eskimos and Native Americans who occupied the forests of Alaska and Canada adjacent to the tundra.

More: https://www.avcr.cz/en/news-archive/Geneticists-have-deciphered-the-prehistory-of-inhabitants-of-Kamchatka-and-North-America/